Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Razgovory]

I don't fully understand this.

[Josquius]

So 15% severe means really  bloody on deaths door severe whilst 80% mild means actually quite serious?

Seem to be missing a few percent there

[Tamas]

Yeah my reading of it is that "mild" in Communist Chinese means "you are not being kept alive by machines". Most if not all of the 80% found cases still had some pretty rough case of the flu with fever and pneumonia and the rest of the package.

Also as I understand, they went back to check 320k Chinese tests there were taken for regular flu to find these "unnoticed" mild cases of Covid-19, and only 0.5% of those cases actually had Covid-19. Indicating that this vast array of people who have it but barely show any symptoms might be just a made up thing.

[celedhring]

Looks like we're in for a big jump in infections today. Madrid region is already reporting a doubling of cases vs yesterday.

Can we go full Wuhan on Madrid? 

[Sheilbh]

Worrying case here of a member of staff in a hospital surgical high dependency unit. Apparently they only came into contact with a limited number of people, who are being isolated and the unit will be temporarily close.

[Tamas]

Here at work they are planning gradual tests of sending some teams to work from home this week. But I don't think we will actually shut down partially or otherwise until the government orders it.

[The Larch]

Can we go full Wuhan on Madrid? 

But I have to go there next week...

[Tamas]

(alleged) Translation of a post by an Italian doctor trying to instill some worry into people about what is happening / can still happen and the importance of preparations, how their hospital in Bergamo went from an eerie silence as they prepared for the storm, to a flood of pneumonia patients.

https://mobile.twitter.com/silviast9/status/1236933818654896129

[Sheilbh]

Not particularly coronavirus specific but I found this description of how COBRA meetings work quite interesting - and something I would love to see implemented at work

The government was scheduled to hold a Cobra meeting at 11am. The Guardian's defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, has this explainer of how exactly such meetings work.

Cobra meetings are held in the basement of the Cabinet Office, not far underground from the Cabinet War Rooms, and represent the crown jewel of Britain's emergency planning system.

Prime ministers, minsters, chief advisers and the most junior official have to hand in their mobile phones and tablets, encouraging attendees to concentrate on the topic in hand – ranging from a terrorism incident, a natural disaster or, in this case, a threatened pandemic.

The acronym stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, although in reality the largest meeting room is Room F, which sits 20 or so people around a coffin shaped table. Screens are mounted on the walls to show presentations and to patch in those who have to participate remotely, such as Scottish first ministers.

The meetings are tightly structured to a pre-written "chair's brief", which is intended to allow somebody to lead a meeting at short notice, if they are stressed, and to get quickly to key decisions. The first step is the Common Recognised Information Picture, the CRIP, an agreed statement of facts – designed to prevent needless arguments about what is going on on the ground. CRIPs are put together in advance, and may well be the product of a considerable amount of work.

Boris Johnson, or whoever is chairing, then solicits advice from key figures such as the chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, or the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, plus the senior ministers present. More junior officials are housed in satellite rooms in case there is a technical question that needs to be answered immediately; the idea is that there is nothing that should not be able to be clarified straight away.

A good brief will warn the chair of likely points of conflict, or if there are going to be ministerial disagreements, and may even suggest ways through. But the idea is that after a relatively short period – it is not uncommon for a Cobra meeting to last just 45 minutes – it will reach the key decision point, in this case whether to formally move to the delay phase of dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.

Meeting over and phones recovered, the idea is that everybody in the room will have a concise shared understanding of the problem and agree what the next steps are in tackling it. But some aspects sit ultimately with the prime minister alone: as when Tony Blair decided not to close the London Underground the day after 7/7, after what had been deemed to be a credible terrorism threat. No attack took place.

[Sheilbh]

Also a member of staff for TfL has been diagnosed with it

I said it felt like we'd avoided a super-spreader situation so far. But maybe not...

Edit: Also there's been draft legislation on new powers. But I am beginning to get a little baffled by what this "delay" phase is. Because I get it starts similar to "contain" but we're a week in and nothing seems to have changed.

I was thinking this watching the football and feeling it sort of feels a little negligent/risky having events like that still going on.

[Maladict]

from the BBC

In a separate development, six people died in a prison riot in the city of Modena, following protests at the new restrictions, local media report. There were also riots at several other prisons in northern Italy.

In Modena, officials say prisoners set fire to a cell block after they were told that visits would be suspended. It is thought that at least two of the dead lost their lives to drug overdoses after they raided the prison hospital for the heroin substitute methadone.

[Tamas]

46 new cases in the UK, now up to 319. In other words the steady uptick continues.

To a layman like me, such an almost mathematical steady increase seems counter-intuitive. Surely the more people have it already the more additional cases should appear? Or is containment still working?

[Legbiter]

Edit: Also there's been draft legislation on new powers. But I am beginning to get a little baffled by what this "delay" phase is. Because I get it starts similar to "contain" but we're a week in and nothing seems to have changed.

I was thinking this watching the football and feeling it sort of feels a little negligent/risky having events like that still going on.

Yeah I feel the same. It's this baffling checkbox mentality when they can watch in real-time the exponential growth of new cases and they can be mathematically certain what happens next. The best case scenario is a fairly slow person-to-person infection which will force their hand to cancel schools and gatherings anyway or a Black Swan superspreader event which will do the same except they'll be rushing headlong to contain a 2-week old event. Singapore and Taiwan are doing well in containing this but they overreacted right away.

[Josephus]

I like how in the English football games, the players didn't do the customary handshakes before the game.

But then whenver they scored a goal, they still hugged, kissed and grabbed asses.

[celedhring]

Did my groceries today, woman in front of me at the cashier was packing 36 rolls of toilet paper